it was not probable that, just after escaping from the most imminent peril, they would fall back into a much more violent state of terror, unless former experience had given them too good reason to dread the presence of the object they now saw before them.
The roughness of the sea forbade their attempting to hoist a sail in order to avoid the waterspout. They were compelled, therefore, to summon all the resolution they possessed, to enable them calmly to await its approach, and put their trust in the arm of Jehovah.
The helm was in the hands of a seaman whose steadiness could be depended on. The natives were down in the bottom of the boat; they had given way to despair.
Two other waterspouts now came into view, and subsequently a third, if not more, so that they felt as if completely surrounded by them. Some were well defined, extending in an unbroken line from the sea to the sky, like pillars resting on the ocean as their basis, and supporting the clouds; others, assuming the shape of a funnel or inverted cone attached to the clouds, extended their sharp points to the ocean below. From the distinctness with which they were seen, it was judged that the furthest could not have been many miles distant. In some they imagined they could trace the spiral motion of the water as it was drawn up to the clouds, which were every moment being augmented in their por-
